The Continuous Life  — excerpt

...

Explain that you live between two great darks, the first

With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest

Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur

Of hours and days, months and years, and believe

It has meaning, despite the occasional fear

You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing

To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,

That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,

A family album that fell from its own small matter

Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,

You don't really know. Say that each of you tries

To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear

The careless breathing of earth and feel its available

Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending

Small tremors of love through your brief,

Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

Mark Strand

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears;
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”

WS

“What the Doctor Said” by Raymond Carver

On April 14, 2020 By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

He said it doesn’t look good

he said it looks bad in fact real bad

he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before

I quit counting them

I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know

about any more being there than that

he said are you a religious man do you kneel down

in forest groves and let yourself ask for help

when you come to a waterfall

mist blowing against your face and arms

do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments

I said not yet but I intend to start today

he said I’m real sorry he said

I wish I had some other kind of news to give you

I said Amen and he said something else

I didn’t catch and not knowing what else to do

and not wanting him to have to repeat it

and me to have to fully digest it

I just looked at him

for a minute and he looked back it was then

I jumped up and shook hands with this man who’d just given me

Something no one else on earth had ever given me

I may have even thanked him habit being so strong

 miamizsun wrote:

 SeriousLee wrote:

nice

and good to see you 

Fall yawns its final breath
Winter slumbers into death
But spring lies deep beneath the sod
Holding a tiny seed... summer's love
(FAL)

Today, at my local Walmart, a big ass red Ram heavy duty truck, decked out with Trump pictures, the Rebel flag, the good old Nazi Iron Cross. So, the following rant burst forth, like a pimple that's gone green and infected, and it's particularly pointed at the MAGA infection that this country and our Constitution can not abide with.

You Dirty MAGAS!!! — A Monologue in Fire and Fig Leaves
by Stonewall-Jackson Collins

Not rat—rat’s too noble. Rats survive, they adapt, they don’t strut through the world swinging iron crosses like cudgels and rebel flags like leashes.

No, you wear your hate like a hand-me-down suit—creased, faded, and passed from grandfather to grandson like it’s some sacred family tradition.
Iron crosses on your bumpers, Confederate rags on your porches—history’s losers clinging to their symbols like children to broken toys.

You dirty MAGA.

You parade your blood-red hats like priestly vestments, mumble “Jesus” with tongues soaked in spittle and scripture you never bothered to read.
Jesus wept.
Jesus loved.
Unconditionally.

You?

You paste conditions to your love like caution tape to a crime scene. Love the fetus, not the mother. Love the soldier, not the refugee. Love the straight, the white, the God-fearing—but only your god, and only if He looks like He votes the way you do.

You dirty MAGA.

You chase money like it's manna, like it's spice, like it’ll save your soul from the hell you're building brick by brick.
You whisper “morals” but pump your fists to predators in power.
You cry “freedom” while dragging books into bonfires and banning thought like it’s a virus.

You dirty MAGA.

Your candidates are carnival barkers, your ethics a tax shelter, your gospel a grotesque parody of grace.
You drape yourself in the flag and call it love, but it’s a shroud for what you killed—compassion, truth, decency.

You shit-talk the poor while praying for blessings.

You ride into town on high horses, hooves stomping on anyone below your boots.

So fuck your symbols.

Fuck your gold-plated grifters.

And fuck the horses you rode in on—may they find better riders, with hearts that beat and hands that build instead of burn.

You dirty MAGA.

You are not patriots. You are not prophets.
You are the smoke in the temple.
The moneychangers at the altar.
The wolf, not in sheep’s clothing, but in a red hat and flag cape, howling about freedom while gnawing on its bones.

The Touch Of The Master's Hand

'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who'll start the bidding for me?"
"A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?"

"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three…" But no,
From the room, far back, a grey-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loosened strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"
And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?
Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,
And going and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand.
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of the Master's hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd
Much like the old violin.

A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,
A game — and he travels on.
He is "going" once, and "going" twice,
He's "going" and almost "gone."
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.

Myra Brooks Welch

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

~ “Messenger” by Mary Oliver, from Thirst

Screw Spring

Screw spring.
I'm the only thing not blooming.
The arrowhead plant, so carelessly plotted,
is growing godammit.
Even the jonquils,
brought for one dinner,
are not quite dead.
Under the bed
the dust is as thick
as wool on spring sheep,
which are undoubtedly
grazing where
grass is growing
at an enviable rate.

Screw spring.
My boyfriend's taken
to getting up early.
He goes out
to see plants
pushing their way
out of the ground,
and flowering,
and sits by some chartreuse tree
in the sun, breathing air
as sweet as berry wine,
watching girls pass.
Their faces are rested
from sleeping alone all winter.

Screw spring.
I wish it were winter,
when the world's
this one room.
These walls, this bed
do
not
grow.

~William M. Hoffman

despots have it so easy in america
they can just point
and the christians attack
ready-made soldiers
already armored for the lord

they can just point
and the violence will follow
because the cruelty is the point
and they’ve sharpened it to kill

america’s bleeding out
so what’s another knife in her side
they’ll bury her in rags
then speak of her with pride

and the rich get more riches
and the powerful get more power
and the christians will claim
that’s what their god intended
all along

because cruelty is the point
and there’s no one more cruel
than a god allowing despots
to make his people into dogs

(and nothing more cruel
than a people who attack
because they’re loyal to a monster)

~Kaitlin Shetler

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

Donna Ashworth

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour."
— William Blake

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

William Blake

Candle Hat

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

Billy Collins